Surface Mount Technology is now the preferred method of automated production of electronic printed circuit boards. Machines for pick-and-place mounting of components on a substrate, such as a Printed Circuit Board (PCB), or a substrate for a System in Package (SiP) component are subject to different, often contradictory demands, such as mounting speed, mounting precision, size, prize, etc. The expression “pick and place” is understood by the person skilled in the art as describing the very mounting operation where a mounting head is moved to a component feeder area, where the mounting head picks one or more components from one or more of the component feeders, and then is moved to a mounting area where the mounting head places the component or components on the substrate.
Supplies of a certain type of component, e.g. a certain specified type of capacitor, resistor, diode or IC are supplied on trays carrying one type of component or on sticks or, as has become most common today, on tapes in reels with a series of pockets of appropriate depth in the tape, holding one component in each pocket. The reels have varying widths between 8 mm and 44 mm. A row of reels, each reel representing a different type of component, are placed in a bin which in turn is placed in a magazine and feed components into the pick-and-place machine as the nozzle arms rapidly pick components out of their pockets and place them on the board. Component manufacturers deliver the components in standard reels of pocket-tape with a thin cover tape closing the pockets. This pocket cover tape must be removed by some method before the component can be picked out of its pocket.
Tape guides or feeders are used to feed the tape into the pick-and-place machine as the components are picked out of the pockets. One such tape guide or feeder is described in EP 1 381 265 B1, incorporated herein by reference. This type of component tape guide or feeder has no built-in tape advancing mechanism. Rather, the tape guide or feeder is mounted for use in the pick-and-place machine so that a feeding mechanism, e.g. a feeding wheel in the pick-and-place machine protrudes through the tape guide or feeder into contact with the pre-threaded tape. Another type of component tape guide has a built-in tape advancing mechanism. The tape guide or feeder is mounted for use in the pick-and-place machine so that an in-feeder built-in feeding mechanism or tape advancing mechanism advances the tape, e.g. a feeding wheel in the feeder into contact with the pre-threaded tape.
Each tape guide or feeder has a specific identity in relation to the pick-and-place machine and in whatever sequential position the reel with its pre-threaded tape guide or feeder is placed in the machine, the mounting machine robotics will properly find and pick-up the proper components from the tape pockets. A method of associating the identity of the tape guide or feeder used to the specifics of the components in the tape threaded into the guide or feeder is described in EP 1 147 697 B1, incorporated herein by reference.
Bins are in conventional systems used to house a row of reels in a magazine as the pick-and-place machine picks components out of the pockets of the pocket-tape. A bin has a predefined number of slots adapted to receive reels. One such bin is shown in WO03024181 A1, incorporated herein by reference.
The accumulator device described in EP 1 92 8221, incorporated herein by reference, for electronic components, is suitable for being used in automatic or semi-automatic stores for storing electronic components, in particular reels or rolls of SMD (Surface Mount Device) components which comprises a container body, such as a tray, suitable for receiving one or more reels of electronic components picked up from a store, with said device comprising means, for the controlled movement along a vertical axis of the plate or tray inside the container body, suitable for allowing the loading and the unloading of one or more reels of electronic components onto said tray.
Therefore, there is a need to improve handling of components in an SMT system, in particular providing information regarding an SMT job to an SMT system operator